


Fitting In

by RosebudBasilton



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Isolation, Jigsaw Puzzles, Past Suicide Attempt, Therapy, author didn't mean to make kevin suicidal but sometimes you drink some wine and things happen, author is projecting but what's new, baby needs a nap tbh, jigsaw puzzles ARE therapy, with a happy ending :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 07:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17741765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosebudBasilton/pseuds/RosebudBasilton
Summary: Kevin goes to Bee about not 'fitting in' so Bee gives him a 1000 piece puzzle because the author doesn't know how good therapy works, pls just believe that the story is kinda solid.





	Fitting In

**Author's Note:**

> i am from new zealand so when i say 'Fuck New Zealand!' it's a JOKE pls dont roast me, i love u prime minister aunty cindy.
> 
> also my favourite line in this whole mess is 'he felt warmth where soup once was', i promise this is a serious story about serious healing.
> 
> p.s. this story was inspired by the wasgij puzzle my flatmate and i did for THRee DAYS, it was intense. puzzle is based on a real and actual puzzle that i completed with my own two hands and also another person's. it's 3am, let's play countdown.

Kevin stared at the puzzle below him.

"Why am I doing this?" He asked Bee as he placed another piece on the board.

"You talk a lot about not fitting in," Bee answered easily, watching as Kevin put the pieces together. "I figured you needed a literal metaphor for that."

"It's a kids game," Kevin sniped under his breath. He was doing pretty well at it, though.

Bee hummed, probably a little irked that Kevin's attitude was so abysmal, more so than he usually allowed it to be for Bee. He stared at the tiny puzzle and worked the rest of it out in his head, carefully placing the pieces in their respective places before sitting back and cocking an eyebrow at Bee.

"Am I done? Or do I need to analyse how the picture makes me feel?" Kevin quipped sourly.

The picture was a puppy. Unbelievably boring and deceptively cute. Dogs are just toddlers who never learn how to speak. Kevin didn't like it on that principle alone. He supposed, then, that discussing his feelings about the picture might be a good exercise.

Then Bee put a 1000 piece puzzle in front of him. Kevin groaned.

" _Bee!_ " He complained, making her chuckle.

"Oh, come now, Kevin," she smiled. "You'll understand what I mean. I had it specially ordered for you."

_Wasgij_. Jigsaw spelt backwards.  _Ha ha_ , Kevin thought sarcastically.  _Ever so clever._

"The picture you make is different to the one on the box," Bee explained. "It's like a story."

The picture was a cartoon of Sherlo- sorry,  _Sheer Luck_ , investigating the Hound of Wasjigville...Kevin wanted to cancel his subscription to Bee.

"Give it a try, Kevin."

"How do I know what picture to make?" Kevin asked, seeing clues with no solutions.

"Ah, ah, ah," Bee tutted. "You have to figure it out yourself. Took me a week. You'll understand what I'm getting at soon enough."

 

×

 

With a clear desk came a cluttered mind, Kevin found. He stared at the clean, white surface and sorted through some things.

1\. Bee had finally lost it and should be mercifully fired.

2\. A puzzle wasn't going to fix him, but Bee never said it would. She only said Kevin would understand something about feeling out of place.

3\. The big lesson he was supposed to learn was probably 'everything has a place and fits together quite nicely', which was exactly something Kevin's didn't want to hear.

4\. He had to try, if only to prove the puzzles were not a substitute for therapy.

Opening up the box, Kevin groaned again. The pieces all looked the same. No wonder it took Bee a  _week_.

He found all of the corner pieces and joined them up to the edge pieces, guessing which way around the picture was supposed to be. He hated this already. He only had the border done when he decided he needed a break.

Just the border. The outline of whatever bullshit Detective Sheer Luck was going to fuck him over with.

He didn't know where to go from there. Having no guide was difficult to navigate. Kevin was well-versed in self-directing, but this was such a trivial task, why did it matter? He had raised himself, through his mother's death and through Riko's abuse and through his isolation in the Foxes, and he was being bested by a fucking puzzle.

_Made in New Zealand_. Yeah? Fuck New Zealand.

Kevin pushed away from his desk to make a coffee. He wasn't really a huge coffee drinker, but since going sober he was finding new ways to torture himself. Coffee with 2 sugars was mild to anyone else, but Kevin felt like a father of three in the midst of a mid-life crisis drinking 3 of those a day.

The dorm door opened and Kevin quietly swore under his breath. He didn't like being out in the living areas while Neil and the cousins were home. They always found a way to push him to the outside.

"Hey, Kevin," Neil mumbled, filling up his water bottle in the sink.

Andrew took Kevin's coffee, right out of his hands, and walked away drinking it. "Hey!" Kevin protested.

"Oh, leave him alone," Neil chastised, already looking annoyed. "Seriously, Kevin. He's had a bad day."

Even though Kevin's brain was chanting  _have sympathy, have sympathy, have sympathy_ , his mouth said, "And I'm supposed to guess that, am I?"

God damn it. Neil was looking at him like he was a freak, now. Like Kevin had just admitted murder. "You're such a fucking asshole!" Neil shouted, storming into his room where Andrew and Kevin's coffee were.

Kevin closed his eyes and regretted ever saying anything. Christ, it would be easier to just pushover to them.

Nicky rounded on him, but Kevin didn't see how sorry he looked. "Kev-"

"Don't," Kevin interrupted, voice wavering just a bit. He hated living here. He hated these people. He hated this fucking team, but he loved his dad and he had to stay. "Just leave me alone."

Nicky tried to persist, but Aaron stopped him, letting Kevin sulk into his room and lock the door.

The puzzle was still there. It still didn't make sense.

He connected one more piece to the border and sighed. It wasn't impossible. It wouldn't be. Something would give and Kevin would finish it.

He hoped.

 

×

 

Two pieces were connected in a baron area of the board, but Kevin was still debating whether they fit.

Because here's the thing: they  _did_  fit. They were the same colour, same shape, matched up okay, but the edges didn't meet.

In this puzzle,  _apparently_ , that didn't matter, though. Pieces would mismatch and have wonky lines, jagged and confused all of the place. Did this work, though? Was it right?

Kevin considered making another coffee, but he didn't want to see anyone at the minute. He was still licking his wounds from Andrew and Neil's double act, earlier. He still didn't get it. Sure, maybe Andrew was off that day, but is Kevin just supposed to let himself be pushed around? What's the point of getting a second chance at life if he isn't allowed to value himself during it?

All the time, Kevin was getting that sort of flack. Hell, that's what he went to Bee for. The team would yank him one way and push him back the other, setting him up to be the punchline of every joke and kicking him when he was already on the ground. He'd spent a almost week locked up in his room, drinking vodka and eating next to nothing, then finished it off with a pill cocktail and hoped that would be the end of it. He woke up in the hospital, though, with only Wymack there to see him. That was all Kevin needed, really.

Still, it ached when Andrew called him a coward and Neil just shrugged to agree. It hurt more than being a joke of a person and a bastard of a son. Kevin curled up in his bed after that and thought of his dad to keep his suicidal habits at bay. It only made him cry more, being in such a terrible position.

No. Those pieces didn't fit together. Kevin couldn't see how he ever thought they did.

 

×

 

It used to be a joke that if Kevin missed practice, it was because he'd died. That was the only way to separate him and his beloved Exy.

Then, he missed practice and almost died.

Now, as he was passed out at his desk with his head in a puzzle box, 10 minutes into practice, Kevin shouldn't have been surprised that his father was breaking the lock on his door to get in.

" _Kevin!_ " He shouted in alarm.

Kevin startled awake and turned to his his dad. "What? What happened?"

Wymack sighed in relief and slumped onto Kevin's bed. "I broke 10 driving rules trying to get here,  _why_  are you not at practice?"

Kevin blinked as he tried to read his clock. "Oh, I fell asleep," he admitted feebly. "Sorry."

Wymack didn't look all that forgiving. "Next time, set an alarm." He stood up to leave. "I'm taking the lock off your door."

"Wymack, wait-" Kevin called, following Wymack out into the living area. "I'm sorry! Please, I'll go to practice-"

"Kevin, I don't want you there right now. Go back to your game."

The dorm door shut. Wymack was gone. Just like that, one mistake, and Kevin had made his own father leave him.

His body felt heavy, yet numb. He looked around, humiliated, but no one was there to see it. He could hear the comments from the Foxes now, rattling inside his head, begging to be heard out loud.

He walked back to his room and sat at his desk, realising he wasn't going to be able to lock, or even shut his door. It was too easy for people to get in, to see him, to mock him. That's all they would do, after all.

Kevin looked down at the puzzle with tears on his cheeks. In one swift hit, he destroyed it.

 

×

 

Briefly, as Kevin walked up to Bee's door, he wondered what consequences there would be for vanishing from the dorm after such a bad day. Would Wymack disown him? Would Neil punch him? Would Andrew finally kill him? It seemed to be going that way.

Bee opened the door with a smile, having expected Kevin from a desperate phonecall. She saw the puzzle box in his hands and smiled. "Did you finish it?" She asked, hopeful.

Kevin shook his head silently, about to cry again. "I did some, but then I broke it up."

Bee frowned and ushered Kevin inside, taking the box from him and setting it on the coffee table. "What made you do that?"

And Kevin explained how he worked  _so hard_  to get the whole right side done, how he refused to drink coffee now because Andrew had stolen his last 3 and Neil had glared at Kevin over the counter as it happened. He explained that he didn't mean to fall asleep, how Wymack had been so mad at him, and that this  _stupid_  puzzle was "ruining my  _life_ , Bee. Dad was all I had, and he just told me that he didn't want me around! The last thing I had keeping me from trying to commit again was Wymack, and he--"

Kevin choked up and sobbed rather ungracefully. Bee held him tight. There was a cup of coffee on the table for him, which he wanted to hit as well, but thought better of it.

He ranted for a while, switching between miserable anecdotes and frantic whining along the lines of ' _I'm worthless, I'm so fucking worthless!_ ' All the time, Bee held him and calmed him, told he would be okay, he just needed to  _breathe_. She even turned a movie on and put some food in his hands to distract him, which Kevin knew for a fact was a toddler-tantrum tactic.

As the movie played, Bee was on a very stern phonecall. Kevin had never heard her so perturbed. He thought the worst, of course, and assumed Bee was mad at him. Bothered that he came to her house and cried on her couch and made a sorry, desperate plea for a new will to live.

If Kevin held his coffee, the table was big enough to fit the puzzle on.

Corner pieces. No, this way up. Edge pieces. Here's the river, here's the policemen, here's the swamp. Just how he had it before.

When Bee came back in, Kevin flinched. "Sorry," he said, dutifully dismantling the left edge.

"No, no, no!" Bee protested, although she sounded happy. Well, positive, at least. "Keep going, Kevin. Here, I'll make you some hot cocoa. Would you like marshmallows?"

Kevin didn't usually let himself have hot cocoa, let alone marshmallows. He remembered how he and his mom got sore tummies on his 6th birthday from eating too many. They were in Kayleigh's bed all of the next day, watching the History Channel and drinking hot soup.

"Yes, please," that little boy whispered for Kevin. That little boy, who was grinning up at Kayleigh Day with marshmallows for teeth as she did the same.

Kevin knew he was crying, but he didn't sob. Tears dropped from the tips of his eyelashes to his cheeks, but his face didn't move. He had forgotten that memory until then.

The puzzle looked different. Maybe Kevin had done more than before. Maybe the light had just changed. The swamp was bigger, maybe. There were 3 policemen, hadn't there only been 2? The mice -  _why_  were there mice? - were wearing prisoner outfits. They can't have been before.

What was it?

He figured out that there was one more policeman on the other side, and a dog with the shadow of a hound. Then, of course, Detective Sheer Luck and-- Jesus Christ, did that say  _Less-iarty?_

There were chunks of complete puzzle and no way to connect them. All of the other pieces looked the same. Rock and foliage and the night sky. Kevin sighed as the picture made less and less sense. Mice? Raccoons? Ghosts? What the fuck?!

Bee sat beside him as he worked, gently nudging pieces toward him when he felt like giving up. She smiled like a mother. Did Bee have kids? A husband? Bee knew the most about Kevin, but Kevin knew next to nothing about her.

"Are you getting the story now?" She asked with an excited fizz to her words.

Kevin slumped, sipping his hot cocoa. "No," he grumbled. "None of it makes sense with each other. There's a lamp that doesn't fit anywhere, a bat and some...what are those? Bugs?"

Bee laughed and rubbed Kevin's shoulder. "Quite busy, yes." She sighed. "Can you think of why I might give you a puzzle like this?"

Busy. Kevin mulled that over. His life was anything  _but_  busy. He had no friends to be busy.

But his brain was too busy, all the time. He was always trying to foresee how things would pan out or how to avoid an inevitable bad outcome. He was always trying to work out what he had done wrong, why was he living like this? He was always keeping score of who liked him around and who didn't. It was exhausting.

Bee waited patiently for an answer.

"Is it because..." Kevin began to guess, but didn't really know what to say. "Like, am I...the puzzle?"

Smiling, Bee lay a hand on Kevin's arm. "Not quite. Think on it. Would you like to stay here tonight? I understand your room is...compromised, at Fox Tower."

In a small voice, Kevin asked, "Could I?"

Bee smiled again.

 

×

 

The next day, Kevin went to practice. He arrived alone, just after everyone else, and considered how humiliating it was going to be, walking into a changing room full of Foxes after such an embarrassment as the day before.

But no one was in there. No one was on the court, or in the briefing room. Kevin had no notifications telling him that practice was cancelled, or that they were doing conditioning at the gym. He wondered if this was a set up by Wymack to get him alone.

He also wondered if he had been cut from the team that easily.

With an Exy racquet and a bucket of balls, Kevin tried to practice on his own. He made shots at the goal and ran laps, but he was so alone. Not even Josten showed up to make Kevin feel less ridiculous.

So, Kevin lay on the court and sighed, shaky. He closed his eyes and brought up the memory of Kayleigh after his 6th birthday, lying on the bed with him, telling him stories about the fae, or his grandparents, or fairytales that didn't make sense.

The court stayed silent the whole time Kevin was there.  That was all he did. He laid down and remembered.

After 10 minutes, Kevin was upset enough to be angry.

He sat up and grabbed his racquet, completely untying the strings and discarding them on the floor. He wiped at his eyes and threw them all around himself, creating a tiny bit of chaos that would suffice him until the evening.

Then, he stood up and smashed his racquet into the ground, before throwing it at one of the goal and watching it light up red. The scene he'd left was message enough.

Chess pieces just don't belong in a jigsaw puzzle.

 

×

 

Kevin wanted to go back to Bee's, but he didn't want to talk about what he'd done. He went to his classes and dutifully copied down notes as they came up, but nothing stuck and everything was numb.

While the team was at evening practice, Kevin tidied his dorm room and texted Bee an apology for her futile efforts to make Kevin reconsider leaving.

_You haven't finished your puzzle._

It wasn't really a deal breaker, to leave the puzzle unfinished. Kevin said as much to Bee and ignored the subsequent call and texts.

His mangled racquet was in his room. He displayed it on the bed and shut the door behind him when he was done.

He wasn't taking anything with him. At least, no suitcase. He took boxers and deodorant in a backpack, along with a phone charger, passport, and wallet.

Fox Tower was so small in the grand scheme of everything. Kevin would be so old one day, that he wouldn't even remember he lived there.

Would he be alone when he's old? Would he have settled down at all? Marriage, kids, grandkids?

Would he have anything?

The thing about his puzzle, left undone at Bee's house, was that there was no way of cheating. He wouldn't be able to see how it was destined to look until he was done. It required diligence and resilience. It required commitment.

But some puzzle pieces just get lost. They're forgotten, or kicked away, or left behind, and the whole puzzle becomes nonsense again. Just one piece for a whole picture to crumble.

The Foxes were complete without Kevin, though. They all had each other. Kevin had no one, save for Bee, who was paid to listen to him and mother him.

He looked at the way Fox Tower faded with every step and came to realise how alone he was. Where would he go from here?

 

×

 

Kevin woke up in a bed that wasn't his and couldn't be bothered to panic. If he had been kidnapped, maybe they could mercy kill him.

"Good morning," Bee said quietly from the end of the bed. Only then did Kevin see the glass figurines lining the walls and realise he knew this room. "How are you feeling?"

No response. No movement. Bee sighed heavily.

"I should have seen you were more unstable. I apologise, Kevin. This is far more complex than I assumed."

Complex.

Assumed.

That damn puzzle.

"Bee?" Kevin croaked, limbs feeling heavy and cold. "What happened?"

Bee combed Kevin's hair back and smiled sadly. "You broke your sobriety, dear. You showed up here last night."

Kevin grabbed her wrist and tried to find the sentence he wanted to say. It was harder now that his brain was muddled with the shame of relapse. He remembered his point, though.

"You can't cheat that puzzle," Kevin said. "You have to keep trying. Even if it's...more complex than you assumed."

The tears in Bee's eyes as Kevin spoke were punctuated with a trademarked smile. "You're getting there. You are."

 

×

 

Kevin drank hot soup and stared at the jigsaw puzzle in front of him.

It was so close to being done. He would finally know if it was worth it to stick it out until the end.

However, when he placed his remaining pieces on the board, there were still holes in the picture. Over the faces of all of the characters. He had no idea how to read the scene.

"It's broken," he said, with the simplicity of a toddler and the tone of a hopeless man.

Bee nodded. She didn't see how it drained Kevin to realise he had done all that work for a botched ending.

He sobbed once. "I lost the pieces, I'm so sorry."

"Kevin..."

"I ruined it." He gasped and hicuped. "Bee, I didn't mean to, I'll fix it--."

"Kevin, it's a jigsaw puzzle. It was never life or death."

She said it so kindly and softly that it Kevin calmed almost immediately. He breathed out and dried his face with the sleeve of a borrowed dressing gown.

"Tell me someone that means a lot to you," Bee requested.

To her surprise, Kevin swallowed the lump in his throat and answered, "Neil."

"Do you think you mean a lot to Neil?"

Kevin was already shaking his head. "Not enough."

"Really? Because I hear you give him extra training at night, free of charge. You match his passion for Exy and you offered to help him cope after Evermore. I even heard that when you knew who he was and promised to keep his secret, you offered to watch over him and make sure he didn't drunkenly out himself. Would you say you mean a lot to him?"

Kevin mulled it over. Maybe... "Yes."

Bee handed over one puzzle piece to Kevin. He stared at it, before he placed it, wondering what Bee's angle was.

"Name another person who means a lot to you."

Kevin blinked a couple of times and drank his soup. "Wymack," he whispered.

"Do you think you mean a lot to Wymack?"

"...I mean, technically-" But ever since his first attempt, Kevin had been nothing but a burden to his father. Tiny mistakes were warning signs. His anxiety had to be through the roof.

"David loves you very much, Kevin. He's told you. He thinks you're brave for fixing Kayleigh's misjudgment and he values your presence on the team. You improved the Foxes ten-fold, we all saw it. You have invaluable skills that David is unbelievably proud of you for. He raves about you whenever he can. He puts your games on and points and says to us, 'that's my son.'"

Kevin felt warm. Inside, where he had once felt soup, he felt warm and choked. When he nodded and smiled, Bee relinquished another piece.

They made it through the whole team. Nothing Bee said was necessarily news to Kevin, but the impact he had on others lives certainly  _was_. It changed everything, really. He pieced together almost the whole board, with only one square left.

"You," Kevin admitted. "After everything you've done to help me,  _you_  mean a lot to me."

Bee smiled and placed a hand over Kevin's. "And you mean a lot to me, Kevin. You're one of the toughest people I've ever met. I know you think I only care because I'm paid to, you said as much last night." She chuckled to herself. "After watching you grow, though, and seeing how you bounce back... You inspire  _me_ , Kevin."

She handed over the final piece. Kevin clicked it into place and took in the picture.

He understood it.

"You are a valued teammate and a worthwhile friend, Kevin. You know that. Sometimes, though, you need to remind yourself of those little things - little puzzle pieces - in order to see how you fit into the big picture."

 

×

 

Arriving back at the dorms, Kevin was able to go straight to his room without any interruption. The twins were playing Xbox, Nicky was cooking, and Neil had his hand tangled in Andrew's hair.

It was like nothing had changed.

Really, nothing needed to change. Kevin was beginning to realise that. Neil was an emotional fire-cracker and Andrew was his spark. Aaron was over-stresssed and not adept to change. Nicky - poor Nicky - just wanted to keep the peace so everyone could be happy. Kevin just needed to get out of his own head sometimes and choose which battles to fight and which ones to drop.

Nicky knocked on Kevin's ajar door and peered in.

"Dinner's ready," he said, leaning against the door. As Kevin stood up, Nicky added, "are you okay?"

To which Kevin replied by hugging Nicky tightly and apologising quietly for his attitude.

"Oh, Kev..." Nicky whimpered, already crying. Kevin didn't let go until Nicky did. "Bee really did a number on you, huh?"

Kevin only laughed.

 

×

 

At practice, no one mentioned Kevin's disappearance. No one thought it strange enough to discuss how he had pulled a disappearing act on them.

Andrew threw the ball at him hard all practice, and Kevin returned the favour by catching it every time and scoring on him, with a new racquet courtesy of Dad. When Andrew was looking sufficiently pissed off, Kevin just scored once more, to really rub his face in it.

As they shed their helmets at the end of practice, Wymack caught Kevin's arm and smiled at him proudly. Probably for more than just Exy, but Kevin didn't want to guess.

"Shower, okay? Then come up to my office."

_No bad thoughts_ , Kevin told himself as the water cascaded down his back.  _You're valued. You're loved. You did well at practice. No bad thoughts._

Kevin stepped into Wymack's office timidly, taking a seat only when he was told to. Recovery was a process. He just had to remember that.

"Bee told me a bit about your past week," Wymack prefaced. "I want you to know, Kev, that you aren't a burden to me. To anyone, for that matter. You scare the hell out of me sometimes and you say you're fine when I know you aren't taking care of yourself, but I will always love you as my son. I overreacted the other day and I said something I shouldn't have. Believe me, Kevin, I know how deep that stuff can cut. I made a mistake. I'm sorry."

Kevin smiled lopsided and stood up, pulling his dad up for a hug. "Guess that makes us even."

Wymack chuckled and held his son tighter.

 

×

 

Andrew, Aaron, and Neil all ambushed Kevin at once when he reentered the dorm that morning. Andrew with a gaze and cocked eyebrow; Neil with stern sounding call of Kevin's name; and Aaron, who body-slammed into Kevin and latched onto him like a koala.

"You are  _not_  fucking leaving," Aaron insisted, his voice muffled from being shoved into Kevin's tummy.

"Yeah, Kevin, what the fuck?" Neil added. "What about night practice? Or the Foxes at all? How would we replace yo--?"

"What the junkie  _meant_  to say," Andrew interrupted, "was that you mean a whole lot around here. We don't want anyone that isn't you."

It was as genuine as Andrew had ever been to Kevin. He decided, for Andrew's sake, to lighten the mood. "Who else would you steal coffee from?"

Andrew snorted and hit Kevin's arm lightly as he went by. Neil joined Aaron in holding Kevin hostage, only beating him by climbing onto Kevin's back and hugging him from behind.

Andrew took a photo while no one was looking, all three of them with dazzling smiles, stacked like a Jenga tower. He sent it off to Wymack, and then separately to Kevin.

_You belong with us._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> me to paula, my counsellor: hey cool metaphor  
> paula, after speaking about the 6 story shoe shop she visited in L.A. one time: i have a metaphor for everything.
> 
> p.s. i highly recommend you try a wasgij. not a spon, but if holdson wants hmu,, drop a comment, baby ;)


End file.
